Pop Quiz: Woo Hoo!! Spring Break!!

*Disclaimer: Daylight Savings Time has turned me into the walking dead. I have not functioned properly since before the time change. This pop quiz may read like stereo instructions because of this. Sorry.

This week is “spring” break for me at most of the colleges I teach at. Of course the word spring is in quotes because as I am writing this we are about to get hit with 7 inches of snow and by the time this posts the snow will need to be shoveled! Anyway, I guess I should be out with my students in Cancun or Bermuda sitting on a beach. Oh wait what is that..most students do not go anywhere for spring break except their jobs?!? It is true. I poll the students every year and most of them tell me they were just at work on those days to make more money or sleeping in. Most of them don’t go anywhere or do anything.

I am not sure why we have to have a spring break. The semester gets drawn out by a week and it makes it difficult for me to get the students back into what we were doing because I know they most certainly do not study over break. It seems like it would be easier just to get the 15 or 16 weeks over with like in the fall and move onto the summer semester. I have asked students and a lot of them agree with me.

I am not sure if anyone in K-12 feels the same about their breaks but I do know that my mother-in-law does. My mother-in-law was a high school teacher and whenever I bring this subject up she agrees with me. She says that after Christmas break it just seemed like it was one break after another (mid-winter break, spring break, and memorial day break etc. ) and that trying to teach anything with any consistency was difficult.

Do you think spring break is necessary? K-12 do you think all of your breaks make it difficult to educate your students?

jodee

JoDee is an adjunct faculty instructor of astronomy and physics at various colleges around her hometown in the midwest. When she is not trying to get her cat, Pixel, off of her laptop she is observing variable stars and researching black holes.